Coinbase Disables Mobile NFT Transfers Citing Apple’s App Store Policies — Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:COIN)

Cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchange Coin­base COIN has ceased non-fun­gi­ble token (NFT) trans­fers on its iOS wal­let app, blam­ing Apple AAPL due to its strict new restric­tions regard­ing NFTs.

Using Apple soft­ware to pay its gas fees would sub­ject such rev­enues to Apple’s 30% app tax, accord­ing to Coinbase.

See Also: Is Bit­coin The Only Cryp­to Asset That’s A Com­mod­i­ty? Here’s What CFTC Chief Says

“Apple has intro­duced new poli­cies to pro­tect their prof­its at the expense of con­sumer invest­ment in NFTs and devel­op­er inno­va­tion across the cryp­to ecosys­tem,” Coin­base stat­ed.

“For any­one who under­stands how NFTs and blockchains work, this is clear­ly not pos­si­ble. Apple’s pro­pri­etary In-App Pur­chase sys­tem does not sup­port cryp­to, so we couldn’t com­ply even if we tried,” it added.

The com­pa­ny fur­ther said it was akin to Apple try­ing to take a cut of fees for every email that gets sent over open Inter­net protocols.

The con­flict over gas fees between Apple and the NFT com­mu­ni­ty has been going on for sev­er­al months. NFT trad­ing has been pro­hib­it­ed from being offered by mar­ket­places like OpenSea with­in its mobile app as a result of Apple’s for­mal refusal to waive its 30% App Store fee in October.

Coin­base Chief Legal Offi­cer Paul Gre­w­al, in response to Coinbase’s deci­sion, said, “When some­one impos­es rules that can’t be fol­lowed, you should ask why. We are.”

Elon Musk, the new own­er of Twit­ter, has crit­i­cized Coin­base’s 30% in-app charge pol­i­cy and claims that Apple has threat­ened to ban Twit­ter from its app store, which has sparked a dis­pute between the two companies.

Apple has not com­ment­ed on the issue as yet.

Next: Black­Rock CEO Says FTX’s Token Caused Its Col­lapse, But The Tech­nol­o­gy Is Still Cut­ting Edge